


nosebleed summer

by marquisdegayaf



Category: None - Fandom
Genre: i do not claim that these are good!! they're just some thoughts and moments, i'll almost certainley delete these soon lmao but while they're here, tw quickly for mental illness and also for mild animal injury and anxiety and stuff like that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-13 05:30:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12977058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marquisdegayaf/pseuds/marquisdegayaf
Summary: stream of consciousness snippets from the summer of 2017, after i took the most important exams of my life to date.





	nosebleed summer

may 2017

when it’s summer in london i can’t walk around my school without the taste of blood in my mouth. the all-encompassing, thick, sticky heat combined with my itchy green school jumper and nylon uniform shirt gives me a perpetual feeling of being on the verge of a nosebleed. 

1.6.17

on a nosebleed summer day during my exams i took caffeine pills and slept in my childhood bedroom. a sunny yellow duvet, a dark purple comforter, hair tied out of my face, eighty-six flashcards and an empty stomach. my childhood bedroom.

4.8.17

when i down the last third of a lukewarm beer which was left on the kitchen counter by some visitor, it’s a lot of things. it’s what my father reeks of when he hugs me after stumbling into my room late at night in two thousand and five. it’s on the awning above me as i sit dejected in the corner of a pub in the west of ireland aged seven, watching the boys play snooker. it’s clasped in my hand as i sit in a field with a plastic grin aged sixteen, watching my friends smile and hating myself for not being able to share in their joy. it’s fizzy and bitter and it stings my throat and brings tears to my eyes. it’s all the moments in which i have felt alone and afraid. i reach for another. 

 

9.8.17

i spent my afternoon curled up on the hideous sofa in our kitchen/living room/dining room, drinking endless mugs of assam tea with soy milk. i’m weaning myself off dairy due to the fact that it turns my skin into a battleground, however my lust for an entire block of mozzarella, creamy and cool and preferably eaten with my bare hands like a child on a dairy farm somewhere in italy, is less than easy to contain. i shrug off the desire and splash some more light brown ‘milk’ into my tea.

the temperature here drops dramatically after midday to such an extent that around two o’clock i pulled off the blue button up i had been sporting and pulled on my brother’s black cashmere sweater. i’m obsessed with all cashmere products, with their softness and warmth, but i have a heightened fondness for this particular jumper, probably because of it’s resemblance to a jumper of my great grandfather’s which my mother used to don when she felt sad or lonely or sick. said jumper is now far too hole ridden to wear, but the one i am wearing now is a fine substitute. it smells sweet, flowery and syrupy, like the dandelion and burdock drink i hated as a small child. i keep pulling up the collar of the jumper to inhale the scent. i wonder where it comes from. aftershave maybe.

10.8.17

today our aunt j arrived, cantering down the slope that leads to our house with lili the portuguese hound at her heels. she’s really our great aunt, one of the many products of my great-grandfather’s six wives, however referring to her as such would earn a person a wack on the arm so we refrain from doing so. she is one of the strongest contenders for most neurotic member of our family, i don’t think i’ve ever seen her relax in my life. like every adult in my life of late she’s put out her back, so t and i had to carry all her bags from the car park up the hill and down the slope. t had to wrestle several bags out of her hands. she always has to be doing something. 

yesterday morning i went to the library in the nearest town and scoured the place from top to bottom looking for something new to read. nothing of any quality seemed to be forthcoming (they didn’t even have any arthur miller) so in a desperate move i made for the comic section. i’m pretty sure i had a numinous experience when, wedged between an x-men annual and a bart simpson comic, i spotted a teal spine with shiny silver lettering and felt a warm sense of familiarity spread over me. fun home never fails to disappoint, no matter how many hundreds of time i pick over it. at three today, once my mother, t and j had left to go walking, i poured myself a gin and tonic, sat in the wicker chair and read it three times cover to cover. i really think every teenager of the lgbt variety should fall in love with alison bechdel at some point. lord knows i have. some of my favourite panels in fun home are of alison in young adulthood, smoking clove cigarettes in bed while reading colette or cycling to the river bank. that’s a world i want to live in. 

i sat on the edge of the rusty nineteen sixties bathtub and washed my feet with the baby shampoo left by the parents of my one year old cousin. it took both my hands working together to turn the to the left and evoke a rush of briefly boiling water. feet still dripping, i blindly felt around the back of the boiler until i pulled out a peach and white striped tube of talcum powder with talco perfumado stamped on the side in a decidedly seventies font. i flipped the lid open and breathed in the scent of my abuela’s bathroom. i wondered if she bought the talc all the way from argentina. 

12.8.17

at six i lay down in my room and started crying. it was the variety of depressive episode which is like a kick in the stomach, short and stinging. the crying passed and i staying laying down, feeling like i was being crushed. i am aware that my writing is shit today. i don't know what to do about it. i stayed up all night worrying around in circles, unable to sleep despite the three mile walk i took with j that day. mum says she's worried.

in the evening, lily the dog got a fishhook stuck in her mouth. i sat in the porch crying while our neighbor tried to get it out with wire cutters, which was ineffective. mum, j and i drove to the emergency vet where they operated quickly and got the hook out. such was my exhaustion after the two hour round trip to the vet that i passed out as soon as i got home, which was a blessing. that night i dreamt that i was someone tall with black hair wandering the city. 

 

13.8.17

this morning j left, leaving the house quiet and cold. i drank five cups of tea and forgot to eat. at one, when t and mum had gone to visit auntie f over the hill, i sat outside reading my rookie annual and eating a granola bar which tasted like sawdust until mum called and told me to come over the hill and talk to all the visitors. i did, and spent two hours laying in the grass drinking tonic and exchanging absurdist nihilistic thoughts with jh, who i adore. he seems to inhale more hash than air and is an utter sweetheart. when i was four his dog rocky bit me on the eye. rocky now has dementia which i think is karma.

in the afternoon t became fixated on buying fishing weights so we drove up to our closest proper shop. i bought a ton of tonic water and some fancy expensive chocolate for the period i am definitely about to have. i hope i won't feel too guilty about it.

14.8.17

at four, mum and i drove to the only train station in the area, which is an hour and a half away and tiny with only two platforms: one for arrivals and one for departures. her train was, of course, delayed, so i hopped from leg to leg for an additional five minutes until lb’s train came clattering to a halt and i ran down the platform to hug her. i was so happy to see her i almost cried- she’s the only friend i made at high school who i’ve never had an argument with.

 

17.8.17

when i look in the mirror and think back to what i saw in june, i feel that a sort of metamorphosis has occurred. the deep purple under eye bags which i thought were all but unshiftable are all but gone, my newly blond hair is thick and shiny instead of dirty and scraggly and long sunny days spent on the beach have left me with a plethora of new freckles and a tan on my face and neck which has given me a whole new quality. i look warm, healthy, vital. when i look in the mirror i still see a boy, my puppy fat and wide eyes make sure of that, but i am much happier with the boy in the mirror now than i was with the previous ones. 

19.8.17

in the morning mum and t went to pick up my godmother l, her son (who we’ve always called our ‘middle child’) o and husband gc. i couldn’t come because there wouldn’t be enough room in the car if i did, so i had five hours free. i decided to cook melanzane alla parmigiana, as a part of ‘rebuilding my relationship with food’. two litres of tomato sauce and an eighteen-centimeter tower of grilled aubergine later i began building the meal: the order of assembly is such: sauce, parmesan, aubergine, sauce, parmesan, aubergine, sauce, parmesan, aubergine, sauce, bread crumbs, mozzarella. i baked it for half an hour, so it was ready when everyone arrived. i ate two helpings and thought it was alright, but not as good as the parmigiana i grew up eating in our local deli. but to be fair that parmigana is made by actual italians, not semi-argentinan sixteen year olds. i have to be kinder to myself, i think.

21.8.17

around three, the kids and mum shinned down the ladder and ran into the sea. i stood knee-deep, staring into the waves. years of holidays to ireland, where we swam in the atlantic in december from when we were three, have left me with a deep adoration of cold water swimming but eczema, anxiety and body dysmorphia mean that i haven’t swum in almost two years. but today the sun was beating down so hard that i felt as if i’d die if i didn't get in the water, as opposed to dying if i did as i’d thought for the past two years. i took a deep breath, ran forward, jumped and let the ocean swallow me up. i swam out further than anyone else, chasing the horizon, until a speedboat rushed past and i had to kick back to the nearest rock. when speedboats cut through the sea near swimmers they cause giant ripples in the sea, bigger than pre-existing waves, which can push people under. t pulled me up on the rock and i watched him and o dive off until it was safe to start swimming again. i swam out even further and used one of the snorkeling masks to look under that water. when you see your body in soft, glittery sunlight it’s hard to hate yourself. i came up for air and floated on my back with my arms and legs splayed, staring at the sky. i’d felt strange all day, felt anger and contempt for someone i love and been awkward and difficult with my family. i took a deep breath and let it go.

i was smiling when i climbed back up the ladder.

 

22.8.17

we spent the afternoon at my godmother’s cottage, drinking tea and watching the pink panther on saggy black leather sofas. then we drove back to ours. l, g, o, t and i danced around the kitchen to gold by spandau ballet, laughing hysterically. it made me forget that tomorrow g mum and i will drive back to london to get our results. i feel sick thinking about it, really sick. like i’m going to cry. i feel like if i don’t get perfect results then i’ll die, because then some of the worst months of my life will not have been worth it. all the mania and depression and restriction and vomiting and sobbing will not have been worth it. it doesn't bare thinking about it. when i try to visualize results day i see an abyss. i dont know whats going to happen.

23.8.17

last night was largely sleepless. g sat with me and read me the princess bride but to no avail. i stayed up until five in the morning, plagued by visions of opening my results envelope and giant black slugs exploding out of it.

10.12.17

i won’t say that everything worked out alright, because it just didn’t. my results were good, sure, and i only failed maths, but it took weeks more therapy for me to get it into my head that yes, i did well. i did really well. during exams i had a nervous breakdown and yet i got good grades. really good grades. and more importantly i’m still here and there will be other summers and i’ll feel the burning behind my nose for those few blessed months every year for as long as possible.


End file.
